


Cloaks

by clare_dragonfly



Category: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, Little Red Riding Hood (Fairy Tale), Schneewittchen | Snow White (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Dubious Consent, F/M, Fractured Fairy Tale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-18
Updated: 2013-10-18
Packaged: 2017-12-29 18:00:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1008368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clare_dragonfly/pseuds/clare_dragonfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Red meets a wolf in the woods. Each has something the other wants.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cloaks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [butforthegrace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/butforthegrace/gifts).



> Contains dubiously consensual sexual scenes and some character death.

The woods were dark, but Red loved the smell of them: the sharpness of the pine, the richness of the loam, the fermentation where leaf-litter rotted under logs, the sourness of wet fur. It had rained the night before, and there were still drips here and there; she heard a steady drip off the end of a branch or leaf into a puddle; the squirrels and foxes and wolves must be even now unhappily trying to clean their damp hides.

Red took another deep breath, closing her eyes to smell the woods, then, with her eyes still closed, took another step inside.

A branch shuddered, sprinkling her with water. But she still had her hood up, so her dark hair was not wetted. And the water that fell before her sparkled in the clear air. She smiled and began to walk steadily down the path.

It was a narrow path, only indifferently cleared; at this time the center was scattered with weeds curling up toward the sunlight, though either side was pounded down by the movement of wood-carts. Red planted her feet firmly in the dirt path as she walked forward. But her eyes darted from side to side, taking in the quick darting movements of songbirds, the tiny white flowers that peeked up through dark leaves, the shaking of bushes where rodents took cover.

Do not stray from the path, her mother had said. But Red’s feet stayed on the path. Only her eyes strayed.

She knew the way well. She had walked it many times, with her mother, with her grandmother, and now that she was old enough, on her own. She did not need to look where she was going. She could choose the right turning of the path (on the few occasions when the path turned) unerringly. She could dream about picking flowers for her grandmother’s table, going mushroom hunting to supplement the bread and dry cheese she carried, running through the trees with her feet bare and the wind in her hair.

She could track the movement of the wolf that stalked along beside her without the slightest quiver in the rhythm of her feet.

Red had grown gradually aware of the wolf. He stank of wet fur and of blood. He was tracking her. But she was tracking him, and she was not afraid of him. She had a knife, and she could handle a wolf, if she had to handle a wolf.

Then she came to a turning in the path, and suddenly the wolf was standing in front of her, still smelling of wet fur and dried blood. He had long hair that hung down wetly over the sharp planes of his face. She had not seen him change, and yet he had been a wolf, and now he was a man.

She put her hand in the pocket of her cloak where she kept her knife and closed her hand around the warm handle, curved to fit her palm. She said, “How did you do that?”

Red did not believe in pussyfooting around things. If you had something to say, you said it.

From the way the wolf smiled, showing his pointed yellow teeth, he understood that well.

“Would you like me to teach you?” he asked. His voice was low and rough, but it had silk in it, like Red imagined she would feel if she ran her hand down the stubbled skin of his neck.

But she was no fool. She would not take him up on his offer without questioning first. “What is the price?” She met his eyes dead-on, though his (yellow) were inches above hers (green), to show him that she was not afraid.

His eyes glinted—flickered?—and his smile widened. A red tongue flicked out and hid again. “Perhaps it’s your pretty skin to hide inside.” He pushed himself off of the tree and loped toward her, veering off as she held her ground, walking an ellipse around her. “Perhaps it’s the cloak you wear on your shoulders, trumpeting your presence to the entire forest.” He stopped directly behind her; she could feel his damp breath even through her heavy red cloak. “Perhaps it’s the food you carry in your sweet little basket.”

“You can’t have that,” she said, working the knife out of her pocket. “It’s for my grandmother.”

“And does your grandmother deserve it?”

Her shoulders jerked, offended at last. “She’s my grandmother.” She turned to glare at him, not yet threatening him with the knife, but letting him see it.

He took a smiling step back, holding his hands up to show that he held no weapon, though his nails—long, dirty, and coming to thick, blunt points—seemed weapon enough. “Relax, pretty one. I won’t ask for any of those things.”

“Then what will you ask for?” She held her voice steady.

He reached out with the back of one callused finger to stroke a line down her throat. “What is it you want, pretty one? Be precise.”

She frowned, puzzled and shivering from his touch. “I want to bring my grandmother her food.”

He shook his head, the damp strands of hair shaking like wind chimes. “What is it you want that makes you ask for the secret of my transformation?”

“I want power.” The words tumbled out of her breathlessly, before she’d had any time to think them through. “I don’t ever want to be an old woman banished to a wood, relying on my half-caring family for sustenance. I don’t want to marry a man and have his babies and keep his house while he works himself to the bone for hardly enough food to feed our family. I want to make my own way and my own choice. I want to be the one who gives the orders, never the one who carries them out.” She stopped, sucking in breath, wetting her lips with a nervous tongue. Was that truly what she sought? An escape from the life she had now, true enough… but as for the rest, she was not sure. She waited to see what the wolf would think.

His smile sparked. “For some of that, my dear, you will have to become a man, or keep one so close that he may as well be an extension of you.”

She shrugged. “I can find a man if I must. I do not need your help for that, at least.”

“No, I suppose you do not.” Without warning, one arm snaked out and caught her about the waist, turning her so that the hand that held the knife did not sink into his belly. She gasped as he pulled her tight, and he sank his teeth into her lower lip as though into a fruit, suckling hard and viciously.

He released her before she could react with violence, flinging her backward to stare at him in shock and feel the blood that thrummed through her veins and rose tingling to the surface of her skin. “Pick flowers for your grandmother’s table,” he said, with a jerk of the head that indicated the whole wood—the wood that was not on the path. “We will meet again.”

“But—” she started to protest, but he was gone again, a wolf loping away into the trees. If he heard her, he did not look back. She sighed with annoyance and some frustration and looked around, carefully replacing the knife in her pocket. Her mother had warned her not to stray from the path, true. She had warned her of wolves and of men. She had taught her to guard herself well.

But her mother’s life, after all, was the one Red sought to escape. She spied a flower, delicate and lavender, that would be hard to resist even had she not already made this decision, and she stepped into the undergrowth.

—

By the time Red reached her grandmother’s cottage, a bright bouquet of flowers laid across the cloth that covered the food, she supposed the wolf had forgotten his promise. She had neither seen nor smelled him. There was no sign of footprints in the damp earth around the cottage, not wolf or man or those of a feeble old woman.

She strode to the door and knocked firmly. “Grandmother, it’s me, Red. I’ve brought you some food.”

“The door is not locked,” came the soft voice. “Come in, child.”

Red entered to a smoke that scratched at her eyes and her throat and filled the room, preventing sight of more than the most basic of shapes. She coughed and waved it away. “Grandmother, what is wrong? Has the chimney blocked up?”

“I cannot tend it,” the old woman’s fretful voice said. It came from the bed, yet seemed to fill the whole room.

“Well, that’s why I’m here,” Red said briskly. She set her basket and cloak down precariously on a small table and hurried to the fire. Her eyes watered fiercely, but she reached up with a poker and knocked aside whatever the blockage had been. It fell into the flames with a shower of sparks, making Red leap back, though not in time to avoid a scattering of tiny burnt holes in her frock. She waved at the air further, but all that seemed to do was move aside the smoke briefly; it filled the room more thickly than before.

“Your clothes must be wet,” called her grandmother. “Hang them by the fire to dry, then come over and help me.”

Grandmother must be quite ill indeed, Red thought. She was never so direct, nor so demanding. But Red liked directness, and she would not punish her grandmother for it—and she was only too pleased to take off her frock and stockings in the overheated room.

She approached her grandmother’s bed on bare feet. There was something odd, some wrong shape there, but she blamed it on the smoke that yet filled the room. She sat down on the bed to heave her grandmother’s arm over her shoulders in preparation for lifting her out.

The grip on her wrist was like iron. She would have cried out, but she knew the lips that closed over hers, and by the time she had puzzled out why this dry, sharp mouth should be familiar, she was on her back, pinned to the soft mattress by a lithe body.

Her skin shivered to the wolf’s touch and wetness crept between her legs as those blunt human claws made short work of her undergarments. Still she tried to fight, worked to wrench him off her, but there was no moving him, not now. His tongue pressed between her teeth and his fingers, claws turned away, pressed between her legs, making her buck with pleasure instead of fight.

He entered her, long and hard, and she spasmed and swelled under his forcefulness. When he at last released her lips, all she could do for a moment was pant. Then she ground out, “You killed my grandmother.”

She thought she saw a smile, the flash of yellow eyes, but in all the smoke still it was hard to make out. He thrust to the rhythm of his speaking. “She was already gone when I arrived. I merely took her body away so it would not distress you. I’m sorry.”

“You’re not sorry.” She wondered if his tale were true. He had clearly set out to trick her. But it was too late now to change what had happened in the past; perhaps it did not matter the order of the wolf’s arrival and the old woman’s death.

His hand came down to squeeze her breast, forcing a cry from her lips. “I’m not sorry.”

—

The smoke had faded and the fire had burnt down. Shivering, Red moved to build it up again; she was somehow loath to put her clothing back on, in the company of the wolf who stretched lean, languid, and comfortable in nothing but his human skin.

She turned to face him, folding her arms under her breasts, and met his leering gaze. “What more? That cannot be all your price. Unless—” She reached to press a hand against her belly, suddenly fearful that she had given up far more than she sought.

Laughing redly, he shook his head. “That is my price, but not all you will pay. And fear not, pretty one.” He stood and stretched, the planes of his skin shining in the firelight. “We are not even the same species. How could we breed?”

Could it really be that simple? He was truly a wolf. She saw that he walked toward the back; he looked over his shoulder, eyes glinting with invitation, and she followed.

Outside was the body of her grandmother, clad in a lace nightdress, laid out like an empty sack on the ground. Red shivered once, spasmodically. But she saw that the wolf had told the truth: she was not rent as by claws, nor did her face show any pain in death, only the end of exhaustion by those sunken eyelids. She hoped the old woman had died comfortably in her sleep. There was yet no smell. It must have been only that day or night.

“There is one thing you must do to gain the power you desire,” said the wolf, his voice oddly gentle—a pup instead of a lone hunter. “I will help you, if you wish it.”

There must have been a reason he had brought her here to her grandmother’s body, but Red could not fathom what it was. “What is it?” she asked, her voice low and dull.

The wolf bent and tore open the neck of the old woman’s nightdress with a spattered, creaking sound. Red jumped back, ready to run for her knife, but he did not deprive the dead woman of her modesty, only bared the sunken chest. One claw pierced the skin over a jutting rib, making a clean, bloodless hole.

“I would not ask you to choose your own blood for this if it were not that she is already so conveniently placed,” he said, his voice even softer than before. “You might choose to find another, should you wish it, but killing is messy.” He withdrew his hand. “You must eat a human heart. That will give you the power of a second human, and with it abilities far greater than what one can consume alone.”

Red sucked in a cold, damp breath, staring down at the body of her grandmother. Was this something she could do? Something burned within her to say that the price was worth it for power. “If I do this thing, I can never return to my home.”

The wolf looked up. There was the shadow of a muzzle on his face. “It is no longer your home regardless.”

She nodded. That was true. But still she hesitated. “My heart desires this. My mind says that she will never miss it. But my hands rebel.”

“I will remove it for you, but you must cook it yourself should you wish it cooked. Bring a cooking implement back to me, and I will deliver the heart.”

Red could not dither any longer. She hurried into the house to find a cooking pot. By the time she returned, the wolf had split open her grandmother’s chest so it glistened in the cool air. He slashed with his claws, then turned and beckoned her—his red-splattered hands filled her with less revulsion than she would have expected—to come close with the cooking pot. She brought it to his elbow, and he lifted out the heart and dropped it to fall wetly into the pot.

She held it up and pursed her lips. The heart on its own seemed to have a smell that the rotting body did not, a metallic smell of blood and of loss. “How shall I cook it?”

He shrugged fluidly. “Whatever way you think best. Just be certain that you do not burn it badly. I will return.” He became a wolf, a wolf with front paws all drenched in blood, and ran off.

Red brought the pot back inside and set it over the fire. She had never cooked a heart before, but she supposed it could not be too different than other meats. She seasoned it with spices from her grandmother’s pantry and the wine from her basket. Then she ate it, bite by careful bite. The taste was strange, but not entirely unpleasant. By the time she had finished, the wolf was back, hands clean.

Then sparks burst behind her eyes.

She did not know what was happening to her; she felt as though every joint in her body was bending in the wrong direction, every nerve ending twisting in upon itself, every hair on her skin standing up as though it was straining to escape her. She could hear the wolf’s laughter as though it came from the canopy of the forest, ringing everywhere about her. Shapes formed before her eyes: faces, eyes, ears, animals, humans. They were shadow and substance, vision and flesh.

Then it faded, though the room had grown dark. She lay on the floor, feeling the grain of the wood press into her back, panting. The wolf, seated at the table, looked down at her, then passed her the half-empty wine bottle. She tipped it into her mouth without bothering to sit up.

When she had drunk it off, she felt as though her limbs could move again. She straightened up, though even that small movement made her forehead perspire and her breath come in gasps. She glared at the wolf, sitting cross-legged on the chair with a smirk showing the tips of his teeth. “You didn’t warn me.”

He shrugged. “How could I have described it?”

“Pain.”

He raised his eyebrows and nodded, accepting that. “Perhaps, if I teach another, I will remember to warn them. But anyone who could eat the heart of another human will not be dissuaded by pain.”

Red would not have been. But she still would have liked to have been warned. She shook her head, trying to clear it; the stars had faded from her vision, but it was still dim in the little house.

“It’s night,” said the wolf, reading her expression.

Red swallowed, her throat dry despite the wine. “I was living through that for hours.”

“I expect it can be done without putting all the pain in one place like that, but this way it is over and done with.”

She pushed herself to her feet, standing unsteadily, but standing. “Did you leave me any food?”

“Of course.” He slid the basket toward her with the tip of his finger. “I don’t eat your human food.”

She unwrapped the food and tore off the end of the bread. “So if I change shape to another animal, I won’t necessarily be able to eat that animal’s food?”

“I can’t say. I’m only finicky.” Red looked at his face, wondering if he was joking; he did not appear to be laughing now. But it was dark.

She ate rapidly, hardly chewing before swallowing it all down. Once finished, she felt better. No—more than better. Energized. Electrified. She took a long, deep breath, discovering that she could feel every particle in her lungs and taste every scent in the air, as long as she concentrated. “Now what?”

“Is there a mirror here? I didn’t find one.”

She shook her head, feeling the ends of her curls tickle her cheeks with the softness of an insect walking on water. “I doubt my grandmother would have kept one.”

He gestured to the bed. “Sleep, then, until the sun comes up. You’ll need to see yourself.”

She looked where he gestured, shook her head, and pulled fresh linens from the cabinet. She took them and curled up before the fire wrapped in them, lulled to sleep by the wolf’s laughter.

—

Red watched herself in the still, clear pool, laughter bubbling up until it felt as though it would pour from every orifice. It was so easy! She could shape her features, take away the little bump she’d always hated in her nose, give her lips and eyebrows a bit more curve, deepen the green in her eyes and brighten the red in her hair… and more. So much more. She could take the form of any animal she saw, pinching and twisting her own shape into it, and then flow back into her own body.

The wolf spoke little, but his eyebrows arched and she thought he was impressed.

“I wonder,” he murmured after her day of practice.

“What do you wonder?” she asked, shaping her face into the muzzle of a cat and back again.

“Any additional heart of your own species will increase power,” he said, not looking at her. “I wonder what you might be able to do, should you have another.”

She took him by the chin and kissed him, long, her tongue sliding against the sharpness of his teeth. When she had finished, she said, “Perhaps I will find out someday.”

—

Red married up, and up, and up. With the stunning beauty she could shape into her features, it was easy; she could even fake the blotchiness that came from crying, or the pallor of illness, and thus no one blamed her for their deaths, for she was clearly so sorrowful.

She did not eat their hearts. She was content with what she had.

She could not shape away another life growing within her, as she discovered. In fact, to her great distaste, it seemed to block her power, resisting every effort to pull it up into the tiny belly of a bird or even back into the slim waist of a fine society girl. She had to find a woman who dispensed life-saving with one hand and life-ending with the other. But she changed her face, so the woman would not know her, and she vowed to learn her own poisons henceforward.

And when her body was once more her own, she vowed to herself that it would never be taken away from her again.

So when her husband the duke had suffered his tragic death, she looked for a husband who would not want a child from her, a husband with so much money and power that he would not notice when she used it for her own gains. And she found him: a king with a child. A small girl, yes, and not a boy to be king after him, but she could see from the grey around his eyes and the tremble of his hand that he grieved his queen and would never seek to supplant her.

And so his power and wealth became her own; she had the finest clothes, a bevy of servants, and so many people who would come at her beck and call that she could not keep track of them. Men would come from every corner of the kingdom merely to fall at her feet. She sent them all away—though some she would call back to her bed, secretly, if they pleased her. It was not as though her husband would notice. And she ignored the girl.

Until one day a man who had come to the palace to fall at the feet of the queen turned, diverted, and fell at the feet of the princess instead.

Red nearly lifted up out of the throne in her towering rage, and she had the man executed for his insult, but still she was not satisfied. The girl had grown to a young woman, fair of face and delicate of figure, while her stepmother was not looking. She was as beautiful as—perhaps even more beautiful than—Red’s transformed face. And that man was not the only one who would realize it.

Even her father noticed it, and he seemed to turn away from his wife; Red was filled with fear that she would lose her power, and the realization that it was still the king who held all the control made her sick with hatred.

But she knew what to do about this. Even if she could smooth her features to mimic the girl’s, she could never be so precise, and everyone in the kingdom knew what she looked like—they would remark on the queen’s change, and they would still not believe her to be as beautiful as her stepdaughter, knowing as they thought they did her true age.

Red still had the power she needed. She would simply have to rid herself of her rival. Even if that meant that her husband would demand a child of her—perhaps that would be enough of a price to pay. And perhaps once she had gained the greater power that the wolf had predicted so many years ago, a child would not be so much of a hindrance to her.

So she found the girl one day when she was alone in her bower, sewing. The child—woman—put aside her work, smiling with real pleasure at the sight of her stepmother. Red almost recoiled. How could the girl be so naive? Well, all the better for her.

“Snow, my darling child,” she said, seating herself beside the girl and putting a delicate hand on her shoulder. “I wonder if you might do me a favor.”

“Of course, Mother,” said the girl, smiling with lips red as heart’s blood. “What is it?”

“My old mother lives far out in the forest, and I am so busy, I have not had the time to bring her food as I usually would. But I am certain she would like to meet you. Will you bring her a basket of food?”

It was a far finer basket, and far finer food, than Red had once attempted to bring to her own grandmother, but it was truly the least she could do. And it would not matter soon.

“I would be delighted!” said Snow, accepting the basket with hands smooth and white as finest lawn. “Why have I not met your mother before this?”

“She is ill and cannot travel,” said Red. “But you are young and strong, and you can travel to see her. Just follow the path. When you come to the end of it, you will find her.”

Red followed the girl down the stairs, then stood at the window to be certain she went into the woods. When she had disappeared into the trees, Red turned away and found one of the men who had on occasion been called back to her: the royal huntsman, a man both competent and besotted.

She had thought of using the wolf, but she did not want him to think that she still needed his help. She had gotten what she wanted from him, and he from her. And the huntsman would do.

She told him what she needed, and when he objected, she gave him a kiss and a stroke of her body that promised more later. And he went into the woods, eyes dazed, weapons sheathed and ready. Red returned to her own chambers to try to make her hands smooth and delicate as the girl’s, with the blue veins shining through.

The huntsman returned hours later, pale and shaking, and would not meet her eyes. He held out a box to her. There was blood on his hands.

Red took the box and sent the huntsman away. It was clear he would no longer be useful to her, not after this. She supposed she should have used someone with less of a conscience, but it wasn’t as though she didn’t have plenty of other men.

And now she had a heart of great power.

She cooked and seasoned it herself, less squeamish and more capable now than she had once been. She ate it for her supper, relishing every bloody bite. She licked the last of the juices from her mouth and sat back to wait.

But nothing happened.

Could it be that the second one did not hurt? She stood and went to her mirror—she had a fine one now, all smooth glass, big enough to show her entire body no matter how she changed her shape. She made herself small, large, fierce, meek, before it, but she had no more power than she ever had before.

That was when she knew the huntsman had lied to her. Her power over him had been less than she had thought. She cursed him, tore the castle apart looking for him, but he had vanished. She hoped he had killed himself for the shame of disobeying his queen. And now he had likely warned the girl, for she had not returned to tell her stepmother that there was no house at the end of that forest path.

But if she feared anything, it would be her stepmother, the beautiful woman she had known all of her life. She would not fear someone she had never met before, someone who was not beautiful.

Red waited until the next night, and then she turned her face to wrinkles and sagging, her hair to coarse white, her nose to length and her back to a stoop. She looked at herself in the mirror and shuddered, then smiled. She would never even know herself in this body.

She took a basket and filled it with provisions and wares. She did not know how far the girl might have gotten, and she would need some excuse and some simpler way of killing the girl, so that no one could tie it to the queen when it was done. She was no longer concerned with eating the girl’s heart. If the opportunity came, it would be well. If not, she could find another heart. Perhaps the huntsman…

She left the palace, disguised, with no one giving her so much as a second look. She went into the woods.

She had not gone more than a hundred feet into the trees before she sensed that the wolf was following her again. This time she squared her shoulders and turned to face him, and watched as he turned from wolf to man. The years had not changed him; he was still the rangy, yellow-toothed young man. He smiled at her.

“How did you know me?” she asked. She had been so careful not to give herself the face of her own dead grandmother.

“We always know each other,” he said. “We call to each other. How else did you know what I was when we met?”

She turned away. He was not going to be interesting tonight. “I have no more need of you,” she said. “Be on your way.”

He stepped onto the path ahead of her. “I think you do have need of me.” His breath, hot with the stink of blood, washed over her. “You are looking for the princess, are you not?”

And how he knew that, she was certain that she would not get a straight answer, either. “And as you cannot help me find her, I say again, be on your way.”

“But you are mistaken,” he said, keeping pace with her as she began again to stalk down the path. “I saw her. I followed her.”

She stopped again, took in a deep breath, glared into his eyes. “And what did you see?”

He shook his head, his grin back in place. “That knowledge comes with a price, my queen.” One long-nailed finger came up to stroke her neck.

She raised her eyebrows. “That is what you would ask? Like this?”

“No, little Red. As you were. No, let me say… as you are. Naturally.”

She sighed. “We will step off the path.”

—

Red gave the wolf what he wanted, and he gave her what she wanted. She resumed her disguise and set out for a cottage where lived seven little men. Her lip curled at the thought of the naive girl giving herself over to so many men, but after all, it was not her problem. Soon it would be no one’s problem.

And the men were away during the day, working; the girl would be alone.

Red found her that way. She persuaded the girl to let her in, to try her wares. She lulled her first with a delicately-made mirror, then a ribbon for her hair. Both were plain and innocuous. She wondered how a girl who had grown up a princess could be so impressed by what appeared to be a peddler’s wares. Was she so ingrained in this country life already?

When Snow was admiring her hair ribbon, that was when she produced the comb. “It would look so much better if your hair were smooth,” she said. “Have you no comb? Let me comb your hair, my dear.”

The oils on the comb did make her hair shine. They seeped in through her scalp until she fell to the ground.

Red hid her basket in a tree and took the shape of a squirrel and waited. Perhaps she would be able to take the heart of one of the men; the princess’s heart would not be safe if poison had pumped through it.

She was glad she had waited. The men came back all too soon, removing the comb from her hair before the poison could make its way thoroughly into her system. Red cursed and pondered a more foolproof way.

She returned home and made—for herself, or so she claimed—a delicate, tiny corset, the waist smaller when fully laced than any adult woman could ever achieve. She boned it thoroughly and sturdily and strung it with sinews that would not break. Then she took a new face, persuaded the girl with her wares, and tied the corset tight until the girl fell down in a swoon, unable to breathe.

Again she watched, and again the little men came too soon, found great scissors and cut the sinews of the corset. The queen cursed and brooded and stared at the little cottage for over a day, searching for another way to kill Snow without being caught.

She could simply cut her throat, of course. But there would be blood, and it was impossible to fully eliminate the blood from everything. She knew this from her first husband. She could make poisoned food—an apple, perhaps, something that would seem entirely innocent—but the reason this method was so foolproof was that the poison would work its way throughout the entire body. The heart would be inedible, and having been frustrated so many times, Red wanted nothing less than the princess’s heart.

So she steeled herself, straightened her spine, and went to the wolf.

She took her own face and body and stripped nude to lure him out from wherever he might be hiding. She hated the tiny wrinkles at her eyes and mouth, the sag of her breasts and belly, the roughness of her hands and feet, but he had wanted her this way before, and he would want her this way again. Sure enough, he came to her, pressing her suddenly against the rough bark of a tree and licking the sweat from her throat before whispering in her ear, “You want something.”

She closed her eyes with pleasure, feeling the lean, hard body pressing up against her own. She did not think the wolf would stop her if she tried to escape, but they both knew he could if he wanted to. “Perhaps I only missed you.”

He laughed, the vibration of his breath on her ear making her shiver. “You? You can have any man you want.”

She felt her lips curl into a smile. That was true. “But you are not a man.”

“True.” His body was enough like a man’s, though, hard and insistent against hers. “I still think you want something.”

“I do.”

“Then what is it?”

She opened her eyes. “Kill the princess for me.”

He pulled his head away from hers, his eyebrows lifting in an unexpected expression of surprise. “You cannot manage it yourself?”

“Not without making it obvious that it was me.”

“You could be a wolf, you know. A tiger. Anything you like.”

She shook her head. “The blood would still be there. And I want to cook her heart, not devour it raw.”

“I see.” He caressed her flank. “Make it quick and easy, then?”

Her body’s arousal brought sudden inspiration to her mind. “No. Savage her so utterly that the body cannot be identified. Only leave me the heart. I will return as the princess, not the queen.”

Everyone had already seen the princess, had compared her and the queen. They knew that the princess was more beautiful and would not forget that only because she was dead. And Red could not make herself the princess now, but when she had eaten another heart she would have all the control that she desired.

And when the king was dead, then she would be queen in her own right. Then—and only then—would she have all the power she had worked toward since the first time she had met the wolf.

“I will do this,” said the wolf.

“Then we have a bargain,” said the queen, and shifted her thighs apart for him.

—

The little cottage was disgustingly filled with blood—sprayed everywhere on the walls, filling the hollows in the floor and even some of the dishes, dripping off the edge of a table. There were chunks of hair and bone here and there. But the heart had been left for Red at the doorway.

She lifted it carefully with a napkin, wrapped it well, and took it deeper into the forest to roast it in the flames of a fire she set by hand.

When she had taken the last bite, the pain came. It racked her body, twisted and broke her. But it was not as bad as the first time, though she did not know if that was because the power was less or because she had already lived through it once. And when she rose from the pain, she had only to think to change her shape. She did not have to concentrate, adjust the details, check her face in a mirror; she simply imagined it, and it was there.

And so the princess returned to the palace, her face tear-stained and her dress dirty and torn, to tell a story of her stepmother’s cruelty.

Her father apologized over and over. But Red remembered the girl’s innocence, her sweetness, and feigned it enough to forgive her father. She was already planning his death. Not this year or even the next; she would wait until the nation considered her an adult, or she would be put under the control of a regent until then, and that would be worse than her doddering father.

“We will find you a husband,” he said. “There are many princes who would die or kill to have your hand.”

Yes, there were, Red thought. But she said, “There’s no hurry, Father. You are the only man I need for now. But perhaps a tutor or two who will teach me what it is like to run a country?”

“Of course, my sweet,” he said, stroking her hair, black as ebony. “You are old enough now to learn. And I will never force you to marry. We have both seen, now, what a danger it is to marry in haste.”

Red nodded sweetly and smiled, but inside she was laughing. She had never married in haste. Marriage was always a long deliberation, careful planning, then a quick capture.

Perhaps she and the wolf had more in common than she had thought.

And they would always have each other.


End file.
